I-Corps: A Dedicated Foundry Service for Emerging Materials

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在半导体制造中使用新兴材料的进步。专用的新兴材料代工厂可以缓解芯片短缺的担忧，这种担忧对在产品中使用芯片的中小企业造成了不成比例的影响。可能有四类客户：化学、生物等领域的科学家/工程师;科学家/工程师在他们的实验室中生长纳米材料;小型/中型物联网公司;以及对将芯片与现有产品集成感兴趣的半导体封装设施。对于每一个类别，将开发一个特定应用的芯片，它将利用二维材料的某些独特特性。拟议业务的中小批量生产线将能够灵活地满足各种客户的目标需求，这些客户将不依赖于晶圆代工厂严格的流片时间表。I-Corps项目是基于开发专用新兴材料晶圆代工厂，以快速周转时间生产使用非传统材料的新型芯片设计。随着硅芯片中晶体管的不断缩小，摩尔定律已经到了停滞阶段。为了克服这一挑战，新型半导体材料已被用于实验证明超规模晶体管的上级性能。尽管它们具有迷人的特性，但在将这些最先进的技术从实验室转移到市场方面进展甚微。因此，今天几乎没有任何代工厂生产基于新型和新兴半导体的芯片。与此同时，大规模生长二维材料，这对大规模生产晶体管至关重要，已经得到了极大的改善。这是一个独特的机会，商业化的新兴材料半导体代工厂在美国的时候，希望重新获得其领导地位的半导体和芯片制造。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of advancements in the use of emerging materials for semiconductor manufacturing. The dedicated emerging materials foundry could alleviate the chip shortage concerns which have disproportionately affected small and medium-sized businesses which use chips in their products. There may be four classes of customers: scientists/engineers in the fields of chemistry, biology, etc.; scientists/engineers who grow nanomaterial in their labs; small/medium sized internet of things companies; and semiconductor packaging facilities that are interested in integrating chips with their existing products. For each class, an application-specific chip will be developed which will harness certain unique properties of 2-dimensional materials. The low-to-medium volume production line of the proposed business will enable the flexibility to meet the targeted needs of a large variety of customers who will not be reliant on the rigid tape-out schedules of foundries.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a dedicated emerging materials foundry for producing novel chip designs using unconventional materials with a quick turnaround time. With the continued scaling of transistors in silicon chips, Moore’s law has reached a phase of stagnation. To overcome this challenge, novel semiconductor materials have been used to experimentally demonstrate superior performance in ultra-scaled transistors. Despite their fascinating properties, there has been very little progress in transitioning these state-of-the-art technologies from the lab to the marketplace. As a result, there are hardly any foundries today which manufacture chips based on novel and emerging semiconductors. All this while, the growth of 2-dimensional materials on a large scale, which is crucial in mass producing transistors, has been drastically improved. This is a unique opportunity to commercialize an emerging materials semiconductor foundry at a time when the US wants to regain its leadership in semiconductor and chip manufacturing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.